I\u2019ve never written a TV or movie review before.<\/p>\n
My relationship with TV shows and movies is generally one of shallow passive consumption; I watch purely for entertainment. I don\u2019t discuss or critique the things I watch, and I certainly don\u2019t have very discerning taste in this arena (\u2026in contrast to my engaged, critical relationship with books, and my discriminating preferences for the latter \ud83d\ude0a ).<\/p>\n
However, \u201cHot Skull\u201d<\/a> (\u201cS\u0131cak Kafa\u201d in Turkish) resonated with me on a number of levels \u2013 most majorly, that the main character is actually a linguist<\/em>(!) and the show\u2019s plot centers on a virus transmitted through language. Unsurprisingly, I have some opinions to share.<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t see the show, there may be a few (general-ish) spoilers in what follows. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Season 1 of \u201cHot Skull\u201d was released in December 2022 on Netflix. It was filmed in Istanbul, Turkey, and is entirely in Turkish (I watched with English subtitles).<\/p>\n IMDb \/ Rotten Tomatoes synopsizes:<\/p>\n \u201cIn a dystopian world, as an epidemic spreads through verbal communication, a tyrannical institution pursues a linguist immune to the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n The official Netflix synopsis:<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the novel HOT SKULL by Af\u015fin Kum, set in a world shaken by an epidemic of madness that spreads through language and speech, the reclusive former linguist Murat Siyavus, having taken refuge at his mother\u2019s home, is the only person mysteriously unaffected by this disease. Hunted by the ruthless Anti-Epidemic Institution, Murat is forced to leave the safe zone and flee within the flames and ruins of the streets of Istanbul, where he searches for the secret of his \u2018hot skull\u2019 \u2013 a lasting mark of the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are two aspects of \u201cHot Skull\u201d that struck me immediately.<\/p>\n First: The main plot-driving concept \u2013 that of a deadly virus transmitted via language \u2013 was also utilized in an older Canadian movie called \u201cPontypool\u201d<\/a> (also based on a novel, by Tony Burgess<\/a>)\u2026so although the premise may seem unusual, it\u2019s not new. This post<\/a> of mine from several years ago references \u201cPontypool\u201d.<\/p>\n Second: There are some obvious parallels between the Hot Skull sci-fi world and the real-world Covid situation, even though the book that the show was adapted from came out pre-pandemic, in 2016. In both show and real world, there is a ubiquitously-seen apparatus that individuals must wear over certain sensory organs which ostensibly protects them from infection \u2013 during Covid it was masks over the mouth and nose; in the show it\u2019s headphones over the ears. There is the tactic of quarantining. And in the show, there is an authoritarian organization which, under the guise of maintaining safety and working towards a cure, pursues its own corrupt agenda (your mileage may vary in drawing parallels to real life institutions here).<\/p>\n Overall, I found the show gripping, and well done on multiple fronts. One might argue that I was essentially the ideal audience for such a series. Perhaps this is why a couple major plot holes didn\u2019t spoil my watching fun (I discuss these under “Questions and critiques” below, however). Elements I thought were particularly notable: the gritty atmosphere, the acting, the integration of occasional surrealist scenes in the otherwise realist (albeit somewhat dystopian) narrative. I also loved hearing the Turkish, as I\u2019d been trying to learn it over the past year. And then of course, the linguistic virus concept.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what exactly is this \u201cepidemic of madness that spreads through language and speech\u201d?<\/p>\n Not much detail is given about how the virus works (addressed below), but we observe the people infected by it, and at a minimum can observe that, after becoming infected, they begin to speak nonsensically. The English subtitles call this \u201cjabbering\u201d, and those infected, \u201cjabberers\u201d (I don\u2019t know how close these translations are to the original terms \u2013 if you speak Turkish, please let me know in a comment!). These jabberers speak constantly, in long monologues, without the expected conversational pauses.<\/p>\n This phenomenon simultaneously enthralls and horrifies me, as I suspect it does others. Nonsense talk feels creepy. Why? One facile answer may be that we associate gibberish with people who are on drugs, or who have mental illnesses \u2013 we can\u2019t easily anticipate what such people want, what they\u2019ll do next, etc., and thus we\u2019re instinctively on guard. A more general, and linguistic-focused answer, is to be found in the realm of pragmatics<\/strong>: the Gricean Maxims<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The Gricean Maxims come from Paul Grice, a philosopher of language, who outlined them in his cooperative principle <\/strong>in the 1970s-80s. They capture the assumptions we hold when engaged in conversation with our fellow humans. The maxims are:<\/p>\n These are meant to be descriptive <\/em>rather than prescriptive<\/em> (see here<\/a> on descriptivism\/prescriptivism). When individuals violate these maxims, we do our best, as cooperative listeners, to try and make sense of what they\u2019ve said anyway. Context is key \u2013 the same phrase, perfectly sensible in one context, can be nonsensical in another. When someone\u2019s speech lies beyond all our efforts at sense-making, interactions break down very quickly. Add a virus into the mix, and you have the easiest recipe for societal-level fear, distrust, chaos.<\/p>\n But the \u201cjabbering\u201d of the infected is not pure language soup. In the very first episode, we hear the epidemic is caused by a \u201csemantic<\/em> virus\u201d. The syntax<\/strong> of jabberers\u2019 speech is in-tact. This means the nuts and bolts of how they form sentences \u2013 morphology like gender\/number\/tense agreement, and word order, etc. \u2013 remains unaffected. It\u2019s the difference between syntactic well-formedness <\/strong>and semantic well-formedness<\/strong>. Noam Chomsky created the now-classic \u201cColorless green ideas sleep furiously<\/a>\u201d to illustrate this kind of grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical utterance. Interestingly, people with a type of aphasia called Wernicke\u2019s aphasia<\/a><\/strong> (most often caused by stroke) demonstrate similar language issues. They speak fluently and grammatically, but their speech lacks meaning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How long does it take for the virus in the \u201cHot Skull\u201d world to be transmitted to a new individual? Is a mere word sufficient, or must there be enough language to be identifiable as <\/em>jabbering? The show doesn\u2019t address this at all, although transmission seems relatively instantaneous once someone hears a jabberer. Which brings us to the most gaping plot hole: It\u2019s been eight years since the epidemic began, and society hasn\u2019t adapted in even the most common-sense of ways to contain the virus. Everyone still communicates verbally. (What\u2019s more, people seem shockingly lackadaisical with their headphone usage.) If viral transmission is so quick upon exposure to jabbering, why are other methods of communication, e.g. writing, not being used instead of speech?<\/p>\nSynopsis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Overall observations and opinions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Why nonsense talk is creepy, and other linguistic commentary<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Questions and critiques <\/strong><\/h3>\n